Hiking pair hopes to inspire youth

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Sonya Richmond and Sean Morton cannot make their cross-country migration with the speed or ease of their beloved birds, but the pair has brought at least as much enthusiasm and determination to an epic four-year, 24,000-kilometre hike along the Great Trail.

Determined to inspire youth to connect with nature through birding, the Richmond and Morton left their jobs, sold their home and set out for a walk along the former Trans-Canada Trail, beginning at Cape Spear, N.L. in June of 2019. They plan to hike all the way to Victoria, B.C., before turning north from Fort Saskatchewan, Alta. to Tuktoyaktuk, N.W.T., while documenting the entire journey on their blog and social media channels.

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They were near North Bay, an estimated five to seven days from Sudbury, when reached by The Star on Thursday morning.

“A big goal of ours is to try and share what we’re seeing with people, to hopefully inspire them to learn about Canada and all of the amazing places and landscapes that are part of it,” Richmond explained. “We want to share as much as we can and learn as much as we can as we go.”

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So far, they have gone close to 5,000 kilometres — 3,300 in 2019, then another 1,500 so far in 2020, despite delays and difficulties caused by the COVID-19 pandemic — across Newfoundland, Cape Breton, Nova Scotia, Prince Edward Island, New Brunswick and Quebec, before entering Ontario.

It’s an unprecedented undertaking, though not quite a new experience for Richmond and Morton, who discovered a passion for hiking while at university together in southern Ontario. A love of birds, nature and outdoor pursuits helped to inspire Richmond’s career in environmental conservation, as well Morton’s as a writer and landscape photographer.

“We have a love of long-distance hiking,” said Richmond, who worked until recently as a GIS analyst, assisting in the development of provincial bird atlases, and an ornithological researcher. “We have done a bit of it in Ontario and we started going to Algonquin Provincial Park, then we did the Bruce trail, then we hiked across Europe, and we really decided that we wanted to hike our own country and to share it with other people. Today’s youth spend a lot of time online and we want to encourage them to connect with nature and to see what is part of Canada, part of the country, to learn about nature and to develop a connection to what’s here.”

They keep a blog of their experiences at www.comewalkwithus.online, and keep social media users updated through Facebook at www.facebook.com/WalkWithUsAcrossCanada, Twitter at www.twitter.com/TransCanadaWalk and Instagram at www.instagram.com/comewalkwithusonthegreattrail.

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They’re also making in-person appearances in several of the 15,000 or so communities along their route.

“The response has been incredibly positive,” Richmond said. “As we have been going across, we have been doing a lot of presentations with naturalist groups and youth groups and the people we have met along the trail have been absolutely fantastic. We have been met with huge kindness and generosity. It has been amazing.

“Every province has its own amazing experiences. In Ontario, one of our favourite parts has been coming up into the North and seeing the Canadian Shield, seeing the lakes, the reflections, just getting back into nature and pristine wildlife. We have really enjoyed that. It was very interesting going through southern Ontario and we have gone through a lot of the major cities, but we’re really enjoying being back up in a natural landscape andseeing this beautiful Shield country.”

And there’s so much left to see. Having wrapped up the 2019 leg of their hike in November, the two had their departure delayed for roughly a month in 2020, because of the pandemic, and provincial restrictions prevented them from re-entering Quebec, sothey resumed in Ottawa on May 20, with plans to return to La Belle Province in the future.

“One of the biggest challenges this year has been the heat,” Richmond said. “It got hot in the month of May and it has been above 30 for a lot of the weeks since then, so that has been another nice thing about getting up north, because it’s a little cooler and we have been enjoying that hugely.”

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While feathered species are always a hit, recent highlights have included several red foxes, looking handsome and healthy, as well as moose and white-tailed deer, including young fawns.

Richmond and Morton want to make the outdoors more accessible to youth of all circumstances, cultural backgrounds and identities — including those who live in urban areas, or whose families are newer to Canada and may be unfamiliar with its more natural landscapes.

“We have been reaching out to as many people as we can, mostly online this year, trying to encourage people from as many different communities as we can to get out here,” Richmond said. “Every opportunity we see where we can reach out to an Indigenous group or people of colour, we’re taking that. In our presentations we’re giving, we’re encouraging people of all ages, abilities, cultural backgrounds, orientations, identities, to get outside and get connected with nature, and the response to that has been huge. It seems to be resonating and we’re trying to push that message as much as we can.

“A lot of people, since being in quarantine, are starting to realize how much nature means to them and they’re trying to develop different ways of connecting to it. They’re looking at putting bird feeders in their backyards, they’re doing a little bit of gardening, they’re trying to develop that connection, and we have had a really big response from people who are just starting out, who are trying to get into the world of birding and into the natural world.”

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Richmond and Morton are encouraging those folks, and even more seasoned outdoor enthusiasts, to use a couple of free mobile apps — iNaturalist for adults and Seek for kids — which help them identify the plant or animal species they encounter.

“You take a photo of it, upload the photo to the app and it uses an algorithm to present you with a series of other photos, so you can use those to identify what you saw and learn a little bit about it, or you can submit you photo and it will get looked at by an online community of iNaturalist experts and you’ll get confirmation of your identification.

“You’re sharing your observations with people, you’re turning them into data that scientists can use to monitor the natural world, and you get to learn about what you’re looking at.”

For more information about iNaturalist and Seek, visit www.inaturalist.org.

bleeson@postmedia.com

Twitter: @ben_leeson